Oh thank goodness this is a semi-reasonable week… in a sense of that all the dances this week were good old-fashioned ballroom dances. So how are the couples going to stack up?
And I say “HA!” with the Sean / Peta ranking… that is just so wrong on so many levels, but what can I do? The other numbers in the spreadsheet are showing nothing for one reason or another… and unless I had forgotten something, ah well.

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

*sighs* And it is another contemporary dance that throws off the predictions this week. Go figure. This time (according to Heidi’s Who is Dancing What and When) it is Aly / Mark with the contemporary routine.

Predictions are slightly different this week as they are the averages of the scores from the previous seasons from the “First Third” and the “Second Third” of previous seasons. “First Third” being the first four weeks of the season and the “Second Third” being the middle four weeks of the season.

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

You know if it weren’t for that darn Contemporary dance that Victor / Lindsay are dancing I would actually have had I would have proper rankings this time around… but as it stands we are probably going to be stuck with average scores from here on out.

Ah well…

If I have time after work today I’ll add more to the list… but really, what’s there to say?

Oh… and if you are curious about how the calculated predictions panned out on Week 1 and Week 2…WEEK 1

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

Here you have it folks the first predicted scores of the season… You didn’t think I’d forget did ya? Well I thought I did, since I seem to have forgotten that the start of the season was today! Geez, you’d think I would have this on my calendar somewhere.

Anyway… after looking at the dances that are scheduled for the first week I realized that my typically spreadsheet data is going to be thrown into the dumpster because everything has gone astray! don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself…
I can’t even rank them! Ugh…

So I don’t know what to do… at least at the moment. I am tempted to just do the score prediction and not even bothering with how they rank because contemporary is such an outlier and out of box concept for ballroom dancers that it just doesn’t seem quite fair.

Grr grr grr…

. . .

Ah well… let’s see how this first week pans out before I really throw in the white towel… I am sure in the coming weeks something will reveal itself so I could provide the best calculations I know for you guys to enjoy.

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

So this is the last weekly score predictions of the season that you guys are going to get from me. Why did I wait for the instant dance to post up predictions? Simply because those are the most worthwhile to use data for.

Freestyles are near impossible to predict for because of the sheer number of perfect scores or near perfect scores, it simply just isn’t worth it.

The dance repeat is also a crapshoot because we have already seen the dance and the judges will either do what TPTB are whispering in their ears or they will go off script and be even stranger… who knows.

What I did notice though is that the scores of contestants in the finals tend to give the viewer an idea of how TPTB are trying to even the playing field. By giving Shawn / Derek a far lower score than the other two it is as if they are compensating from the sheer volume of votes they are getting in comparison to Melissa / Tony or Kelly / Val.

But this is speculation and I don’t have the date to prove or disprove anything… yet.

So that leaves the instant dances. Granted they will not be exact and I really wouldn’t be surprised if let’s say Shawn / Derek and Melissa / Tony would get close to perfect scores with Kelly / Val bringing up the rear so that the winner will be just down to popular vote.

But enough speculation, below is the table breakdown of the final three and how their scores appear to pan out for the three possible dances (Samba, Cha-Cha, and Jive).

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

Oh Em Gee… Week Nine? The Semi-Finals and we have five couples left in the competition? It is interesting to know that in a week it is the finals and then we have to wait til March for the new season of Dancing with the Stars. Not a bad thing mind you but… anyway.

Since I am at a time crunch I am going to just provide the data, some tidbits that I know and let you guys draw your own conclusions:

Below is the table of the predicted scores. As to be expected we don’t really have all that information for the “chosen” dances but for my sanity let’s just focus on the dances that we do know of…

If the predictions are to be believed (and the score from approximately the same time frame in the original seasons) then the top three couples would include Shawn/Derek, Apolo/Karina and Melissa/Tony which would be just fine by me (and probably most other people).

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

Yay the Trio Challenge **rolls eyes**. ANYWAY As always take the below table with a grain of salt:

Now for the eighth week of competition in Season 8: Melissa originally received a 21 because she was injured that week and as thus her score was based off of the dance rehearsal footage taken earlier that day (or weekend).

I find it rather interesting that Emmitt is the only one that has not done either one of the dances that he is assigned this week in his original season.

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

So a few words of warning... since I am using scores from the season prior to that of Season 15, those fusion dances that include the tango (Melissa/Tony and Shawn/Derek or Mark) where the celebrity did not dance the tango in their original season I substitute for the Argentine Tango... just so I don't have a lot of blank scores all over the place.

Since at last rumor in accordance to Heidi’s Who is Dancing What When… Mark appears to be dancing with Shawn Johnson I created the following table to reflect that:

But let’s compare that table to the rare possibility that Derek would be able to dance with Shawn this week:

Anyone noticed that? I think it is pretty clear that with Derek, Shawn would have a slightly higher chance of being towards the top of the leaderboard than with Mark (provided that no storyboarding is going on). Then again…

Yes I know that Kirstie has done the quickstep below… however aside from Season 15, has anyone in their 60s completed the quickstep in the latter part of the season? From what I have been able to see I do not believe so… but I am only human.

And of course since this is the first time that Valentin Chmerkovskiy has made it past Week Four so any pro data is out the window for him. **Sighs** Season 15 the bombs to my spreadsheets…

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

Before going on let’s look at how the scores could stack up if Week 6 did NOT have Week 5 added on to it.

A few things to note:
– Since we are in Week 6, the calculations above is strictly based off of scores from Weeks 4 through 7 in a traditional 10-week season. Just to keep the scoring semi-reasonable.
– Although Apolo Anton Ohno has a score from his original season for the Viennese Waltz… in actuality he has done the Waltz in his season and did not dance to the Viennese Waltz.
– Does anyone else find it odd that Derek – until this season – has never done a Cha-Cha between Weeks 4 through 7?

Now let’s look at how the scoring went down in Week 5 (including the Team Dances).Read more..

My life can be summed up in the following two quotes: 1) "I am married to engineering and am its faithful wife by day, but at night my wanderlust takes hold and the arts becomes my jealous paramour." and... 2) "Engineering is my safety net. Writing is my passion. Acting is my escape when the other two become too much." So where does dancing fit in? Pretty much anywhere at this point... =)

All in all, a great start to the All Star season!! A whole bunch of fantastic dancing, with few exceptions, no doubt. And yet…we still have a couple instances of really hinky scoring and other hijinks. So, we’ll give Shawn and Kirstie extremely bad songs for foxtrots, give Gilles and other men PERFECT songs and then we’ll be extra sure and not only pimp Emmett, but overscore him as well. I love Gilles and think he was overscored relative to the other couples, but Emmett?? I smell fish. I’ll just echo Courtney and add…Gilles works for ABC, and Emmett is a football player scoring high on MONDAY Night. The female football audience?? Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all. :::rolls eyes:::

But, after all my moaning….those scores are essentially irrelevant because the exactly wrong person was the low scorer and by a significant margin. Anyway…

The Judges Scores and Percentages

As you probably deduced all on your own, Pam and Tristan are in real trouble. The judges were absolutely right when they called her out on her lack of preparation – seems clear they are paying attention to studio time this season, like they have occasionally in the past, and it’s going to be noted if you don’t do well AND you weren’t putting in the time. It’s the All Star Season. It’s to be expected.

Anyway, what does Pam have to do in order to survive to dance again? Pray. And hope that someone else (Drew? Helio?) is completely forgotten. In terms of votes she needs to do ONE of the following in order to be safe:

– Pam has to get 7,340 more votes per million votes cast than Kirstie, OR;

– She needs to get 9,050 more votes per million votes cast than Bristol, OR;

– She needs to get 12,660 more votes per million votes cast than Joey, OR;

– She needs to get 14,470 more votes per million votes cast than Melissa, OR,

– She needs to get 16,280 more votes per million votes cast than either Drew, Helio or Kelly, OR;

– She needs to get 18,100 more votes per million votes cast than either Shawn or Apolo

I could go on but I won’t. You get the picture. The only one of these that I could see happening is Melissa or Helio…with an outside shot of Drew. I don’t think that Pam has the juice to get past either Bristol or Kirstie….or Joey….but I’m going to say right now that Melissa and Helio could be surprises. If there is such a thing as a surprise elimination this season.

Anyway, let’s say that by some miracle (and crazy Tristan fans ) Pam survives. Kirstie is the next lowest scorer. In order to stay in the event that Pam gets past her, she would need the ONE of the following:

– Kirstie has to get 1,810 more votes per million votes cast than Bristol, OR;

– She needs to get 5,430 more votes per million votes cast than Joey, OR;

– She needs to get 7,240 more votes per million votes cast than Melissa, OR,

– She needs to get 9,050 more votes per million votes cast than either Drew, Helio or Kelly

Yeah, I think she can do all that easily. I don’t think she’s in trouble. Bristol? Needs ONE of the following to happen if both Kirstie and Bristol survive:

– Bristol needs to get 3,620 more votes per million votes cast than Joey, OR;

– She needs to get 5,430 more votes per million votes cast than Melissa, OR,

– She needs to get 7,240 more votes per million votes cast than either Drew, Helio or Kelly

This is where I’m less sure. I don’t know if Bristol has it this season like she did in her original season. These are the all stars!!

I could go on and on, but at the end of the day, I think Pam is going home. If there’s a shock, I think it will be Melissa. If there is a real surprise that I don’t discuss here, I’ll do a numbers wrap up.

I'm a nerd and proud of it. Two degrees in geology also means I love BEER. :-) I'm also a Derek lover - proud of that too. So don't scream at those of us on this site and call us a bunch of "biased Derek-lovers" - it's just ME. :-) It may sound like I hate DWTS at times, but really, I'm just a snarky nitpicker from way back. And I'm cynical and jaded too. But I do love DWTS. :-)